Continual Professional Development for Dental Professionals
The General Dental Council (GDC) mandate that to remain on the GDC’s register of active members they must ensure they remain up to date with their CPD requirements and maintain the relevant evidence of CPD undertaken.
Just as the dental profession advances and changes, so too have the GDC’s CPD guidelines. The GDC handily summarises these requirements for dental professionals in the video below and further guidance can be found on the GDC’s website here.
When did the GDC introduce the new enhanced CPD guidelines?
In late 2017 the GDC announced the new Enhanced CPD guidance that would apply to all practising dental practitioners from January 2018 onwards and dental care professionals from August 2018. These changes superseded the previous guidelines that were issued in 2008.
These changes were introduced following their Shifting the Balance consultation carried out in 2017.
The new guidance for dental professionals included four key elements:
- The mandating of a personal development planner (PDP) for all practitioners and professionals.
- The mandating of submitting an annual statement to the GDC, even in the case where no CPD has been earned.
- A requirement to complete more hours of verifiable CPD, and more evenly spread over a five-year cycle
- The removal of non-verifiable CPD from logs or submission.
The guidance also provided more detailed criteria and quality controls for companies providing CPD. 4everlearning has incorporated the Enhanced CPD guidance into all elements of its offering to help dental professionals adhere to the GDC’s guidelines. And, we will also ensure we remain up to date with any future changes.
What are the GDC’s enhanced CPD requirements?
- Meet the hours requirement linked to your dental title also ensure you complete at least ten hours verifiable CPD every two years
- Maintain a personal development plan and keep a record with evidence of verifiable CPD.
- Make your annual statement to the GDC using the eGDC website. There is a link to the eGDC website here.
The number of verifiable CPD hours required over a five year cycle differs by dental profession.
- Dentists 100 hours
- Dental therapists, dental hygienists, orthodontic therapists, clinical dental technicians 75 hours
- Dental nurses, dental technicians 50 hours
How does 4everlearning help me comply with these requirements?
Using the Plan, do, reflect, record cycle advised by the GDC, we can demonstrate how 4everlearning has incorporated tools, features and controls in the platform to make this process as efficient and seamless as possible for our members.
- Plan – Every member is entitled to our intelligent PDP where you can plan out your development needs relevant to your field of practice(s) and link these to content available in our extensive catalogue.
- Do – Once you have identified and planned out your learning needs, you can find the content you need from our extensive catalogue of CPD content. We already offer over 100 hours of verifiable CPD content and this is constantly being extended so check back regularly to ensure you get the full benefit.
- Reflect – The inbuilt PDP enables you to add your own self-reflection at any time once you have completed a piece CPD content. We also take your feedback very seriously so at the end of each CPD course you can provide us with a grading and written feedback to help improve the CPD content.
- Record – 4everlearning records all your active learning time down to the second detailed in your own session log. Once you complete the CPD content this will automatically be updated to your PDP log. You can also add any externally earned CPD activities and certificates to the PDP, giving you a single record of all your CPD activity.
At any point in the cycle you can easily gather certified evidence of all your CPD activity from the My Certificates section and the PDP Activity Log. All certificates are quality assured by 4everlearning (UK) Ltd.